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Wednesday, January 06, 2016

"It stands against any authoritarian, from the Right or the Left, who sucks fun and freedom from the world... and who uses faux grievances and exaggerated victimhood to get what they want."

Coming 2016: All-Out War On So-Called 'Social Justice': "In 2016, battle lines will be drawn. On one side, people of all colours, genders and orientations are rallying around the flag of freedom of speech. On the other, a nasty set of authoritarians are rallying around a flag that identifies as a flag only on Mondays, uses they/them pronouns and will try to get you fired or expelled from school if you forget it.

Let me explain. In 2015, I saw the seeds of a movement begin to sprout. Across the internet, and even in fear-gripped halls on campuses, young people began to stand up and challenge the humourless, divisive, identity-obsessed elites that have taken over our cultural discourse. People of seemingly disparate interests and politics — gamers, pundits, metalheads, comic book and science fiction fans, atheists, Catholics, conservatives, libertarians and even many disaffected liberals — came together to agree on only one thing: art and culture should be left alone.

That movement is called cultural libertarianism. It stands against any authoritarian, from the Right or the Left, who sucks fun and freedom from the world like some kind of vampire without the cool factor, and who uses faux grievances and exaggerated victimhood to get what they want. Cultural libertarianism rejects the fainting-couch feminism and race-baiting of the Left in favour of deliberately provocative joyfulness and exuberance. It also predicates facts over hurt feelings, versus the social justice crowd who want to turn harrowing anecdotes into “lived experience” — which we are then expected to treat like scientific data...

While college campuses retreat into safe spaces, emotional coddling and treating the leaders of tomorrow like primary school children, cultural libertarians think of new ways to provoke and offend people. In a culture of control, conformity, and coddling, cultural libertarians are the true counterculture. 2015 was the year victimhood and hurt feelings became social currency — but cultural libertarians are putting an end to the madness...

In a world where looking righteous is more important than doing good, making pure, socially-just art is preferred to, say, discussing the sex slaves of ISIS. Policing Twitter is more urgent than policing a neighbourhood. Superficially kind words and intentions replace genuinely kind acts...

It’s now clear that progressives, lecturing the rest of us on how we ought to live from their bully pulpits in the media, academia and the entertainment industry, are terrified of the internet and don’t want to know what we have to say. Well, tough. In 2016, it’s time for the counterculture to go to war. Over the past year, I’ve seen people from all over the world stand up and fight back against the authoritarian, censorious world being built around us...

The public is getting sick of nasty, spiteful rants from people who pretend that their objectives are nice-sounding things like “diversity” and “equality” but who are really just bullies. “Why does no one like me?” cries the SJW. Maybe because without regard to your race, creed, colour, gender, sexual orientation, et. al., the content of your character just sucks. Here’s a tip for social justice goons: sometimes when you think the rest of the world is mad and evil… it’s not them, it’s you...

Unlike radical progressives, cultural libertarians will never give you a banned book list. We want you to expand your mind, not your obedience to a rigidly-defined cult of conformity. Read your enemies, too. Listen to their media, browse their books, read their columns. Scout, probe, learn the ways of people you can’t stand so you know their arguments before they make them. Over-read, over-prepare, then win so decisively nobody forgets it. Forge unlikely alliances."